The Girl's Guide to Waking Up in Pieces

"I saw my life in scale: it was just my life. It was not momentous. I saw myself the way I'd seen the cleaning woman in the building across the street. I was just one person in one window. Nobody was watching, except me."

I'm not really supposed to be reading this book but it is one of the books I read in between breaks of big books with big words and even bigger feelings. I don't like going through good books in rapid succession. It takes the magic away. So, I read this book. Light, predictable and somewhat hollow, I was going through the pages rather idly, smiling at the few angsty but witty observations scattered across pages, just waiting (and wanting) to reach the end. It went on like that, up until I read one small line:

"We are all children, until our fathers die."

And that was that because I still find myself in pieces, most of the time.

God did good on this one

Filed in: Beautiful boys with smoldering stares touching fat, stout English bulldogs

Today, I propose that we do not do anything except stare at the perfection that is Ryan Gosling, pausing only to take short reading breaks for articles that reveal his awesomeness, such as his own piece on the Congo conflict minerals, lengthy blog posts by girls who are just helplessly taken by his swag and guys who do not know any better. We can refer to it as "A study in Ryan Gosling and the way he looks at women like they're the most important and precious thing in the world" and call it a day. You're welcome, people. You too, hipsters.

Rain and Innocence

Weather in Manila has been terrible these past two days. I hate it when the weather is terrible because people match it with an equally dysfunctional and unpredictable behavior, myself not excluded. Last night, I was not able to sleep well because of the strong winds howling outside my window and today, most of Manila had to put up with power outages that stretched for hours on end. I'm a little bit worried since I have a week full of deadlines and meetings but I know my worries do not amount to a hill of beans in contrast to the damage of typhoon Nesat all over Manila.

Since I couldn't get things done, I went in and out of R.E.M sleep the whole day. I also tried to get myself to like Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence but I gave up halfway through the book and picked up Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient instead. The prose is definitely better: it's vivid, fluid, passionate, and very rich but not so dated. I feel it's going to be a favorite.

I have not given up on The Age of Innocence though, because I still dream of being well-read in the classics (a lofty dream, if you ask me, but I have my whole life to accomplish this feat). Being the Philistine that I am, I looked up the book online and found out Martin Scorsese directed a 1993 film version starring a young and beautiful Winona Ryder and a dashing Daniel-Day Lewis as main protagonist Newland Archer (who is kind of like a New York City multi-hyphenate in the 1870's). I'm going to watch the film first just so I can get myself to visualize the plot better. Heh.

New York high society, I have to admit, is always a hit or miss on my end. I like New York but I like the bohemian, artsy, tough, won't-take-a-crap-from-anyone city that is New York. It's kind of hard for me to like a satirical novel penned under the guise of old world traditions and high society entitlement. My issues, of course. One day, in the not-too-near future, I know I'll pick up The Age of Innocence again. Hopefully, I will learn to like it then.

Things I did this weekend: Indulged

03:00PM, Sunday. In which I dive deeper into my horrid and hopeless love affair with delicious things. 

These macarons were supposed to be a present but macarons, much like most desserts, never really last long in my presence. I kept on looking at the gold box and the daintily tied orange ribbon around it that by lunchtime, I was just ready to destroy its entirety. And that's exactly what I did. I finished a box of macarons on a Sunday. Because I am a lady, usually.

Things I did this weekend: Visited a museum

For her birthday, my sister asked us if she could visit a museum (because her recent class trip was in a petting zoo and she thought it was not doing her any good, being underexposed to Philippine history). We were also supposed to take her to the walled city but it was a rainy Saturday afternoon so we skipped that part of the birthday trip. We took her to a pet store instead. 

Here are my favorite parts of the museum--a gallery detailing the galleon trade and the Spice Route, a small room for Linnean taxonomy (my favorites were the crustaceans, they made me hungry) and the many jars from an old sunken ship, the galleon San Diego. 

My sister is a little too young for the collections over at the Ayala Museum but I'm hoping I could take her one day. For now, I think she's okay with places where the entrance fee is practically free. I'm just really glad she's getting into the things I like the most. :) (The goal is to let her develop a distaste for trivialities like theme parks so that the next time we go out on a family trip abroad, she'll only ask for museums and marine conservatories. That would make me a really happy sister.)

Philippine National Museum

P. Burgos St, Rizal Park , Manila

(632) 5271215

Something in the way he moves

Some links I love this week

1. A collection of photos from the golden days at Everyday I Show. These are basically pictures of a time that has come and gone. It's nothing but pictures but they are really great pictures in black and white. I love the golden era so I absolutely love this collection of photographs from the happy olden days. I'm sure you'll enjoy it, too. My favorites are: James Dean, shots of the Kennedy family, Elvis Presley and Ann-Margaret, a fantastic shot of the New York City Rockettes  and a photo of a lady hiding in fear of sniper fire.

2. The best cities for street art from Travel + Leisure - I have to admit that looking at street art is a guilty pleasure. I like looking at it and when done right, I think the underground street art scene is a great movement. My favorite is Banksy, of course, but there are a lot of interesting taggers and bombers out there that I would just love to follow (Swoon of NY, for one). Also, I find this very useful whenever I troll forums on taggers I like. For websites, I like Wooster collective (It follows taggers all over the globe and it's awesome) and I also like this photo set of Soho Street Art.

3. Live free or die by Dan Tague - Using various bills of differing denominations, Dan creatively folds US dollars to spell out interesting messages about America and society. Money as a medium in art almost always adds a complex and political message about society. I think that's one of the reasons why money is a compelling medium in various forms of art. It works because the message cuts to all classes.

4. Adweek explores the world of food styling—with a backstage pass to the 'Bon Appétit' test kitchen. I happen to read a lot of food magazines. My favorites are Gourmet, Food & Wine and Bon Appetit and I don't think I've ever tried any of their recipes (I have Everyday by Rachel Ray for that--shameless information sharing right here) but I do think they're the Fantasyland of the epicurious. I love reading them because every issue is accompanied by an array of photographs that are far too pretty to look at or eat. In this article, Adweek dives deep into how test kitchen products transform into magazine-worthy food. The subject: chicken biscuit.

5. 100 Greatest Beatles Songs from Rolling Stone - Another article about the great magic of the Beatles. Two wonderful things about this article: Elvis Costello wrote it and he gives due credit to the creative process involved in the fab four's song writing. I really enjoyed this article. It reminded me why The Beatles' music, even after nearly fifty years later, continue to touch people. It also put into perspective the maturation of their lyrics, looking at it from its early stages to the full-on hype and eventually, the disenchantment leading to their break-up. The lyrics went from strange and catchy pop to simple lyrics of love to a vague narrative of some sort about what is going on in the world at that time. Bless them, they still get me through most days.

Also, I share the same sentiment of every Beatle fan. There is no "best Beatle song". It's impossible to answer just one. As far as best songs go, off the top of my head would be a jumble of songs enough to make a mixtape and they will change according to my mood. Right now, they would have to be: I Will, Something, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, All My Loving, If I Fell, Can't Buy Me Love, Ticket to Ride and Michelle. Oh, to love and to be loved in return.

6. Surrey student puts Cristiano Ronaldo to test at Surrey Sports Park - In a recent TV documentary sponsored by Castrol, a PhD student (Zoe Wimshurt) put Real Madrid football stunner Cristiano Ronaldo (also the world's most expensive footballer) to a test of football skill, strength, agility and mentality (the tests were mostly focused on his mental strength and intuition). I believe Ms. Wimshurt's study looks into an athlete's performance and how this performance can be improved by their vision. Anyway, the real star of this short tv documentary is Ronaldo. I may have a wee bit of bias because I am not immune to his Portuguese charm and amazing football prowess on the pitch (despite studs on his ears, his excessive abuse of hair products, and his numerous tanning sessions worthy of a Jersey Shore casting) but after watching this video, I know full well no one could ever argue that Cristiano Ronaldo is not worth his salt. Get this: He pulls 30 legit football moves in 8 seconds, hardly ever looking at the ball in possession or the defender. On another test, he successfully scores two goals in pitch black darkness, only relying on his subconscious to measure the trajectory and motion of the football. The people testing him have concluded that it is his years of practice that lead him to be who he is today, a scholar of football. (I really liked how Zoe Wimhurst compared learning and mastering football to learning a language, that was an excellent analogy)

So, yes. The test of just how epic Cristiano Ronaldo can get. And he is. Epic. RESPECT.

PS: Sorry for the obvious lack of anything useful. Fall means it's TV premiere season so I've been ~*busy*~ acquainting myself with the return of shows I've missed and new shows I might learn to love. I am terribly behind my IR websites but I have no regrets, just love. Heh. 

Small notes from my bookshelf: The Happiness Project

In which I write about a book I can't make up my mind on. 

The Happiness Project. This book is about a year-long self-improvement project to increase happiness, satisfaction and contentment. It's a lot Ben Franklinesque than I thought it would be and I think I can learn a lot from reading this book (although my reading this book has been conveniently scanning the pages and the months because I can't get myself hooked). I'm not really sure if I'm up for a year-long project of my own though.  I'm not even sure if I like this book or not, so I will ramble.

I do appreciate the book's message of simplifying our lives and finding the joy in the small stuff but I can't help but wonder what made her life so stoic and unsatisfactory anyway? She seems to be doing well to me. I'm not sure if it's just me and my thing against First World Problems. Here in Manila, a lot of people live with less than a dollar a day. We really have no room for taking it easy and simplifying our lives because life is tough and simple is what we can afford, most of the time. I loved reading Eat, Pray, Love and Catcher in the Rye but I've always had a thing against the Western world and its lack of resiliency. I got the same vibe when I read this book. Where I come from, people suffer from really devastating tragedies and they just go on with their lives because they need to. Perhaps it's just a matter of perspective. I did like the quotations and the lists. I thought they were pretty crafty and most of the time, the insights made a lot of sense. I don't know. I need to read this book again but if you think you could afford to chase happiness and find out if there are certain things in your life that need to be fixed, pick up this book. It might be helpful. 

Wet and Runny, Runny and Wet

04:35PM, Ya Kun Kaya Toast, Manila. As always, I intentionally mistook free time for snack time and placed an order for a Kaya toast set and a Milo Dinosaur. I seldom say no to egg-based dishes. For example, soft-boiled eggs on toast is something I constantly crave for since the yolk (+ light soy sauce, + pepper) tastes like cheese sauce. It also goes very well with bread. Plus, there is nothing better than chasing eggs and toast with heaping spoonfuls of powdered Milo, straight into my mouth. I am twelve forever. Oh and hey, craving satiated. 

Things I did: White Wednesday edition

My International Law class is on a Wednesday. On that note, my Wednesdays are usually long and it does not end until a little after ten. It involves a lot of reading, writing, eating, and praying that I get called only when I have an answer. For this week, I armed myself with coffee, noodles and the color white (because a. I love a good laugh, b. I am lazy and c. I have no self-control ☹ I also have a wee bit of coffee addiction but that may also be filed in c).

I had a late lunch of gyoza and Chashu ramen (disappointing in two ways: no soft-boiled egg and it came with crunchy bits reminiscent of tempura batter. I finished it anyway so I guess I'm the real disappointment in this story.) Then, I...

Back to being four eyes

Monday, 03:52 PM. I visited the eye doctor today because it's been a year since I last had my eyes tested. Thankfully, my eye grades are still the same. I had new glasses made just to let my eyes rest from contact lenses though. I have to be careful because my eyes are showing signs of strain. I thought it was because I'm in front of the computer all the time but the doctor said it's the kind of eye strain you get from reading in dimly lit places or while in motion. I guess that makes sense because reading is what I do most of the time, on or offline.

Lucy Lou

Sunday, 05:27PM. I have a schedule I follow but I'm four hours behind because I've been reading Lucy Knisley's Stop Paying Attention comics. I just love her work. I'm glad she moved from Chicago to New York! More stories about my favorite city! (Not that Chicago isn't beautiful, but I could use another person to live vicariously through, actually) ♥

▲ ▲ ▲

Saturday, 09:41 PM. I wanted to transcribe my International Law lectures last night but my spirit is weak. The world readily gives me dark chocolate on a regular basis but I haven't had the good fortune of running into it lately so I stole a white chocolate bar from my mother's stash. White chocolate is not chocolate, but my incurable sweet tooth enjoys everything. And by everything, I mean everything, including sweet and fatty triangles of death that are wrapped in foil and sold as chocolates (actually, they're just butter).

So, no International Law notes. I stayed in bed, ate "chocolates" and read until I fell asleep. I am a fat hog.

"I like my money right where I can see it...on my bookshelves."

03:30 PM, Book Sale in Mall of Asia, Manila. It's been a shitty day plus it's sale season at the mall, so I passed by a used book store before heading home. I feel happiest (greatest, really) whenever I purchase books that are practically free. Check out my loot! These four books cost just a little over what we pay for a venti cup at Starbucks. I got Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel, The English Patient, for 115 pesos. How can something so brilliant be worth so little? Anyway, it's going to be a great weekend! After I transcribe this week's International Law lecture, that is. :)

Remember to Love

Some links I love this week¹:

Remember to Love at NPR - Somebody I knew tweeted that 9/11/11 was "a heartbreaking day to be in New York City". True enough, most of the New Yorkers I know shared how gloomy it felt to be in NY at a time when the city and its inhabitants were still mourning the tragedy that struck exactly ten years ago. I listened to parts of "Remember to Love: Let Us Love One Another", a concert at St. Paul's, honoring the fallen of 9/11. Located right across the World Trade Center, St. Paul's has become a center for healing and comfort after the attacks. You can listen to the concert (it's about two hours long) at NPR by clicking the link.

25 Everyday Things You Never Knew Had Names - I, for one, love the word "Tittle" because it sounds so obscene but it's really not. I await the day when I can finally use it. Some "words" (or phrases), like Morton's toe, Arms Akimbo, Philtrum and Crespuscular Rays, are already familiar to anyone who took P.E. or science classes. These names aren't useful though, and it has to be known that anybody (unless said person is a doctor) who would use Rectal Tenasmus in a sentence must be punched in the face.

Jackie O's Diss List at Slate.com - Whenever Slate.com does a Double X list, trust that they will do it right. Two weeks ago, the excellent people of Slate came out with "Ten Mistresses Who Change History", a list filled with women who literally kicked ass (Mob wives, authors, Cuban revolutionaries, a Chinese concubine turned Empress--just to name a few.) This time around, Slate compiled a list of Jackie O's not-so-friendly thoughts about people she has met while her husband was in office. It's nothing short of scandalous. In fact, it was feisty enough to pique the interest of one young (pseudo) Suri cruise. Incidentally, Suri's burn book is one of my favorite websites. It's obviously not written by the real Suri Cruise but whoever's behind that blog, writing as a bossy and snobby baby, is hilarious. Respect.

Sen. Miriam Defensor - Santiago's Reproductive Health Bill Logic 101 - This was Sen. Santiago's speech during the RH bill forum in UP a few days ago. I thought it was well-written and the small jokes made it very appealing to the students. My favorite part of the speech was her discussion of the fallacies surrounding the RH bill. I think it's a fresh respite from hearing all the moral arguments presented by politicians and groups against the RH bill. One does not have to agree with Senator Santiago to say that she does her homework, she knows what she's talking about and she takes a stand so definitive that her arguments are almost always sound. I really like that about her, she appeals to logic and intelligence. I think I've had enough of appeals and arguments riling up the moral passions of the masses. I really don't like that. It furthers my belief that religion (or the misuse of powerful religious institutions) is an Achilles' heel to our country's development.

Why we are shallow at The Philippine Star - This piece was written by F. Sionil Jose for his column, Hindsights. It tried to answer why, despite having many talented and successful citizens, we remain shallow as a nation and how being shallow hinders us from achieving our full potential. Of course, gross materialism, arrogance and religion were pointed out in the selection but my favorite parts were the ones about the lack of significant content in our media and our lack of desire to read:

"We are shallow because our media are so horribly shallow. Every morning, I peruse the papers and there is so little to read in them. It is the same with radio — all that noise, that artifice.

I turn on the TV on prime time and what do I get? Five juvenile commentators gushing over the amors of movie stars, who is shacking up with whom. One of the blabbering panelists I distinctly remember was caught cheating some years back at some movie award. How could she still be on TV after that moral destruct? And the telenovelas, how utterly asinine, bizarre, foolish, insipid moronic and mephitic they are! And there are so many talented writers in our vernaculars and in English as the Palanca Awards show every year — why aren’t they harnessed for TV? Those TV moguls have a stock answer — the ratings of these shows are very high. Popularity not quality is their final arbiter. They give our people garbage and they are now giving it back to all of us in kind! So I must not be blamed if, most of the time, I turn on BBC. Aljazeera, rather than the local TV channels. It is such a pleasure to read The New York Times, the San Jose Mercury News, the Washington Post, to listen to “Fresh Air” on US public radio and public TV where my ever-continuing thirst for knowledge (and good entertainment) is quenched.

We are shallow because we don’t read. I go to the hospital on occasion — the long corridor is filled with people staring into the cosmos. It is only I who have brought a book or a magazine. In Japanese cities, in Korea — in the buses and trains, young and old are reading, or if they are not holding books and magazines, they are glued to their iPhones where so much information is now available.

In these countries and in Western cities, the bookshops are still full, but not so much anymore because the new communications technologies are now available to their masa. How I wish my tiny bookshop or any Filipino bookshop for that matter would be filled with people. I’ll make an exception here: BookSale branches are always full because their books are very cheap. But I would still ask: what kind of books do Filipinos buy?"

This week's Top 5 songs:
1. Are You That Somebody? - The Gossip
2. Flash a Hungry Smile - The Mystery Jets
3. White Nights - Oh Land
4. Fuck Me Pumps - Amy Winehouse
5. Clap Your Hands - Sia

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¹ The list is shorter than usual because I didn't have time to read things online this week.

Climb every mountain

Some of my friends are fond of going on hikes around the Philippines. They always invite me out of courtesy but I've made it pretty obvious that I'm not one for the outdoors. I'm lazy and I'm not into roughing it. Unless there's a bed and bath at the foot of that mountain, I'm not going anywhere near it. (Mostly because a trek up a mountain in a humid climate is almost always equal to an asthma attack, and I really do not want that) The only thing I'm open to climbing is a step ladder to reach books on top of a high shelf, which I offset with a lot of lying down and reading later on.

But hey, I was able to trek Mt. Olympus in Washington. Okay, perhaps trek is an exaggeration since we really went up there for the food and I spent more time at the gift shop than anywhere else. The park had a skyline trail, a lodge and really, really fresh fish (because food is the only thing I remember from trips like this) from the rivers surrounding the mountain. I found some pictures I thought I lost in the process of setting up my computer. Check it:

Olympic National Park
600 East Park Avenue
Port Angeles, WA 98362

Seattle: Day and Night

I'd like to think that certain things remain beautiful, whether in darkness or in light. Seattle, 2010.

Excuse the sudden nostalgia. I realized I have a treasure trove of pictures just sitting in my hard drive. It's been a while since I last went to somewhere scenic. I have to admit that there has been a notable lack of anything fantastic in my life (lately, at least) and it has been driving me nuts. Sweet Jesus Navas, I think I need an adventure again. Let's work on it, Universe. :)

Mass collaboration and Soviet collectivism are really polar opposites

"Anonymous blog comments, vapid video pranks, and lightweight mashups may seem trivial and harmless, but as a whole, this widespread practice of fragmentary, interpersonal communication has demeaned interpersonal interaction. Communication is now often experienced as a superhuman phenomena that towers above individuals. A new generation has come of age with a reduced expectation of what a person can be, and of who each person might become."

"A real friendship ought to introduce each person to unexpected weirdness in the other. Each acquaintance is an alien, a well of unexplored difference in the experience of life that cannot be imagined or accessed in any way but through genuine interaction. The idea of friendship in database-filtered social networks is certainly reduced from that."

"If you want to know what’s really going on in a society or ideology, follow the money. If money is flowing to advertising instead of musicians, journalists, and artists, then a society is more concerned with manipulation than truth or beauty. If content is worthless, then people will start to become empty-headed and contentless. [...] Reciprocity takes the form of self-promotion. Culture is to become precisely nothing but advertising."

Jaron Lanier, You Are Not a Gadget

Little bottles of Love Potion

Some links I love this week (I missed last week, oops!):

Magic Juice from Design Sponge - It's a refreshing drink that will remind you of summer! And who wouldn't want that? Click the link for the recipe, or if you're having a rather bad day and would want something with a better kick (better = stronger), why not try Glamour's Forget The Mistake You Made At Work Margarita (feels waaaay better than their Engagement Chicken recipe, trust me)! Also, speaking of great drinks: I really swear by The Pioneer Woman's Perfect Iced Coffee recipe. I love it and not just because I have a thing for drinks served in mason jars.

Who Invented The Oreo? The Unsung Heroes of Cookie Design from The Atlantic - In which people discuss the design aesthetic of the world's most popular cookie. I really like the speculation that connects Oreo to free masons, not that it matters since Oreos, free masons or none, have a hold over people that science can't even explain. Please see: oreo cheesecake and deep fried oreos.

Know your Princeton Economist at Vanity Fair - A side-by-side comparison of new chairman of the White House Council Alan Krueger and fellow Princeton economist Paul Krugman. More than the idea of a Princeton face-off, I like the idea of a comparison of hair color in the salt-and-pepper subgenre.

The Fifty Most Powerful People in DC at GQ - GQ explores the new power structure in Washington by creating a list of men and women who truly have clout in the White House and at Capitol Hill. Oh, and ladies, Jon Favreau is on the list.

An open letter to New Yorkers on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 at McSweeney's - An open letter of a guy who learned his way from apathy to empathy, spilling his real feelings towards New Yorkers and 9/11. I love this part of the 'letter', "Since then I’ve watched countless hours of 9/11 coverage on the Internet. I try to find the best, the clearest, the most horrifying videos. I have seen so many people fall from the towers. I have felt things, I think, but still have no answers. I don’t know if I should be upset, traumatized, or indifferent like I once was."

Ultimate art lover's pilgrimages at Lonely Planet - One day, when I get a job that will let me travel and earn big money, I might be able to do this. Lonely Planet lists places of art and design beyond the usual museums, it includes artists' homes and places that inspired their works of art and design. Dali, Kahlo, Gaudi, Van Gogh and wait for it...BANKSY! All in the same list. How awesome is that?

Jonathan Safran Foer's Speechless in The New Yorker - In this snippet of literature, Jonathan Safran Foer (author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a book with a post-9/11 theme) tries to put 9/11 into really beautiful words. I have mixed feelings about Foer and his stories but his words are always, always, always right.

How 9/11 changed Fiction, The Economist - This article examines the works of fiction inspired by 9/11 and the reasons why it's so hard to write something so spot-on about something so tragic. Some writers chose to go ahead and write about the event itself while others chose to go the other route and write about human emotion and the dominant Western complacency pre-9/11. Of Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, "It had a number of touching moments but was ultimately too long to carry itself."

A man's guide to a woman's wardrobe at The Economist - "Because men, when they think of women’s fashion at all, tend to see it only in terms of how it makes them feel—whether it arouses, confuses, or repels them—rather than considering what it makes a woman feel." Gentlemen, you better recognize. Read this.

Poses by Yolanda Dominguez on YouTube - This one is a conceptual art of getting ordinary women to adopt the poses typically struck by models in fashion magazines and hold them in public. The poses look absurd and the public reaction is amusing. I found it funny, I have to admit, but the message behind this project is really beautiful. The artist tried to express what many women feel about women's magazines and the image of women in the media – absurd, artificial, a hanger to wear dresses and bags, only concerned about being skinny and beautiful. Dominguez wanted to use the impossible poses to represent this type of woman and to show how absurd it is in a real context.

100 Years of East London Style in 100 seconds on YouTube - Between this video and Alber Elbaz's Lanvin Fall 2011 Campaign with stiff models dancing, I'd say East London fashion takes the cake. Watch on full screen for better effect!

Lastly, GQ's A Buyer's Guide to Watch The Throne. I already wrote about Watch The Throne (that Kanye x Jay-z album with really horrible lyrics) and the Foreign Policy blog discussing Jay-Z's hegemony in American Hip-hop before, but people who actually have the album will know that it's practically a shopping catalog. In this slideshow, GQ echoes my sentiments. They catalog every item name dropped by Ye-Z in the album. How very depression-friendly.

PS: Do you guys have Listography.com? I found out about it from my friend Ria's blog (it's new!) and it's the next coolest thing after Twitter, Good Reads/Shelfari and all those music sites. I think it's awesome because I like making lists about anything and everything (lists I eventually throw out the window to go with the flow, but hey). I'm listed under ohoctopus over there. :)

I want you to watch this film

Forever's Not So Long from garrettmurray on Vimeo.

In which George discovers that the end of the world is the perfect time to lose everything.

Love, meteors and New York. What do you do if you only have four hours to live? Forever's Not So Long is an apocalyptic short film that's set in (what I think is) the most magnificent city in the world (Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to be precise. Hipster cred!). It's science fiction but the story is very humane.

It's a great film that has already won a couple of awards, which I think it deserves because the story is L-O-V-E-L-Y and the shots are great. The script and the score are both very fitting for the movie, too. I especially like how George embodies the New York state of mind. Tough, brave on his toes and really, just going with a "Fuck it, the world's going to end anyway" attitude, George is tempered by the charming and sweet girl (Her name isn't even mentioned in the film. I guess why bother?) he meets on the street.

With only four hours to live, they make one last connection with each other and eventually, face the end together. I really like how the film shows the ability of people to connect even in the face of doom, and how we find happiness (however fleeting it may be) even in our darkest hours.

The beginning of term

September is International Literacy Month so I'd like to be around here more often, writing about the thing I love doing the most: reading. I think I could do that. I can still read (sometimes, I still read books even when I really should be reading something else) in between my many readings for grad school and the papers I still have to rewrite for my theories class. If I tried hard enough.

I realized I don't really talk about grad school very much unlike my other classmates with blogs. I guess it's not my thing (?) since I never know the right things to say. Let me tell you a little something about school for tonight though, just because. It's now my third term and my favorite class, so far, was last term's Contemporary Issues and Trends class. I wish I excelled in that class but I didn't. I really liked our reading selection though, most of the articles addressed complex issues in a sensible way. One of our readings was Jonathan Franzen's op-ed on Technology and Love. It was one of our best class sessions. I think "going for what hurts" is now part of my decision-making process. Also, I have a bias so subjects taught by my favorite teachers¹ become my favorite subjects . I don't know about this term, though I doubt I'd have that "just happy to be in this class" feeling once again. It is what it is (and I'm going to get through it).

This term, we have International Law and Research Methods. I quite like the idea of studying international law. We already had that when I was an undergraduate but I don't know what it will be like on a graduate level.

Anyway, at the start of every term, I make an online copy of the syllabus because I usually lose mine after two meetings (I have also lost it on the day it was given, because I am a scatterbrain). I've been working on my IntLaw syllabus which is 25 pages long. The syllabus itself is like a reading. I have to admit that it's pretty great (in an "OMG, great white sharks are so great but they're so terrifying" kind of way). I found this part of the syllabus so boss so I spliced it for you (my imaginary friends) since I am already oversharing anyway. It's a winner:

Will I be able to read the suggestions listed under the headings? Well, no. But I like having them there, just in case. You'll never know! #charot² My French is so bad that for the longest time, I thought oeufs en cocotte³ meant eggs and cheese. X_X

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¹ Mostly made up of women professors I look up to because they kick ass in their fields and they're really very cool. Also, I really like it when professors motivate their students through objective comments, like the way my professors make me want to be better at writing (and this whole MA thing). I think my contemporary film teacher is on sabbatical but I did enjoy writing for her class when I was still in college. I think one of the reasons why I'm still in school is the small hope that one day, I will be very good too. Although at the rate I'm going, that change will probably come in another lifetime. At least I tried, no? :(

² Charot \ˈcher-ət\ - (n): a joke, may be used interchangeably with chos. Both of which are interjected between statements to connote harmless banter. (i.e. "That was just a chos!")

³ It means eggs in ramekins, unfortunately.

Focus, freedom, focus

In which I (vaguely) update you about my recent big decisions or what's going on in my life right now. If you have no time to read, there's a short summary here.

I have more free time now. More free time than I'd like, truth be told, and it's a disconcerting (but truly welcomed) feeling. I've been wanting a break from things for so long and I finally have it now. I feel like life is trying to teach me a lesson. I've always had a stubborn, jump head first attitude. I never really think things through. I have always been a fan of biting off more than I can chew.

I'd like to believe that in place of dreams that die a quick death, a rebirth happens. Something different, but better and bigger than plans I alone have made for myself. I like the idea of that. I like believing in reasons that will only surface through time. One of the lessons I learned this year is that all things truly great take time and tremendous effort. The road to success is tedious and no one will give me anything. I like that challenge but it's impossible to rise to that challenge when I'm distracted. I have to focus and regroup. I believe better paths are rewarded to people who continuously try and pull themselves back up to start over again.

I'm not a stranger to disappointment management, dream realignment, holding on and then letting go of goals that prove to be futile. I think in one way or another, I knew that adulthood will wake me from the idyllic dreams I once had in my youth. And although it seems that guiding lights rarely come to jaded, undiscovered twenty-somethings (or twenty-flat in my case) of my generation, I know that one day, after we've dusted ourselves off these sad, real world stumbles, we'll find our way again.

It doesn't have to happen all in one time.